Wikipedia is a major source of information for people looking for just about anything. Despite the dispute on its reliability, so many people still use the site as a source of information that it is (and has been) one of the world’s top 10 websites for many years. While Wikipedia has been a collection of information that actually helps educate people, it has also been a website used by online trolls to trash and spread negative information about people and companies. When this happens, I am often asked if there is a way to delete a negative Wikipedia page.
First, understanding how Wikipedia works is important to understanding what can and cannot be deleted. Information within a Wikipedia article is obtained from reliable sources on the topic. For instance, if there is an article about Donald Trump in Forbes Magazine, information that is in that article can be used within his Wikipedia page and the Forbes article can be used as the backup citation for that information. Now, not all information that is contained in reliable sources is favorable.
Thanks to the World Wide Web, information about people and companies travels quickly. Within minutes, major incidents are reported and sent through feeds directly to our smartphones and tablets. Information that used to take days or weeks to travel throughout the United States, now has the capability of reaching the same audience within minutes. For some reason, people love to read negative press (and the media loves to print it). When a reliable source prints negative information, Wikipedia editors love to add it to Wikipedia just as much as those seeing the new love to read it. This often becomes an issue for people as no matter how “untarnished” their life may have been, they now have a mark on their record that will forever be on page 1 of Google search (thanks to Wikipedia hitting on page 1 of Google for just about everything).
Can negative information be added to a Wikipedia page?
Absolutely. And no, you cannot simply delete a negative Wikipedia page because it contains negative information. As stated above, negative information can be added to a Wikipedia page as long as it is supported by a reliable source. There are other guidelines that need to be kept in mind that may limit the input of negative information. One of the most notable would be the policy on due and undue weight. If it is a single incident of negative information, the entire Wikipedia article should not be dedicated to it if it is only a small percentage of what the article is about.
Negative information cannot simply be removed from an article unless it does not conform to Wikipedia guidelines, there is a competing guideline against the addition of the information, or editors have come to a consensus that the information should be removed. However, there is one situation that is not often cited, but can be used to delete a negative Wikipedia page. This situation is where a page has been created for the sole purpose of attacking the subject of the article and is most common with biographies of living persons. The term is known as an attack page and there is a guideline that allows for the page deletion if you can get an administrator to agree with you.
What exactly is an attack page?
Wikipedia defines an attack page as “a page, in any namespace, that exists primarily to disparage or threaten its subject; or biographical material which is entirely negative in tone and unsourced.” Basically, it is a page that was created for the sole purpose of attacking the subject. You can compare it to an online troll leaving a negative review on Yelp. This type of page is frowned upon when it comes to biographies. In fact, Wikipedia recommends that if there is an attack page that is a biography, that it should be deleted. And, if the subject of the article is actually notable, to either revert the page to an earlier version (prior to the addition of the negative content) or remove the information and recreate the article as a stub (a short article usually consisting of only a few paragraphs with basic information on the topic).
How to delete attack pages:
A person cannot simply delete an attack page. To get the page deleted under speedy deletion criteria, it must be marked as an attack page. It will then be reviewed by an administrator who will determine if the page is in fact an attack page and if so, whether to delete the article, revert it to an earlier version, or recreate the article as a stub.
If you want to delete a negative Wikipedia page, you can also recommend the article for deletion and allow it to be discussed by others in the community. When this happens, you will need to make your case for why you feel the page is an attack page and convince other editors of the same. There will be approximately seven days of discussion that will take place and in the end, whatever consensus (if any) is reached, is what will wind up being the fate of the page. If editors agree with you, it will be deleted. If they don’t, then it won’t.
Don’t get your hopes up:
After bearing through all of the content above, I want to make sure that you do not get your hopes up that you will be able to delete a negative Wikipedia page. While the guidelines seem simple and the process quite logical, convincing editors and administrators that an attack page is in fact an attack page is extremely difficult. Also, keep in mind that just because a page has negative information on it does not necessarily (actually rarely) means that it is an attack page. I recommend that you are certain about a page being an attack page before you take any action against it. Doing so without being sure is likely to poke the bear and cause the situation to get worse (watch as more negative information is added to the page by Wikipedians who are upset that you dared question their judgment).
If you are having issues with negative information on a Wikipedia page, the best thing to do is simply rewrite the content to ensure that it is neutral. After all, negative information is a part of life, but slanting the information one way or another should not be. If you have questions about negative information contained in a Wikipedia article or if a page could potentially qualify as an attack page, you can always ask the question on the article’s talk page, or contact me and I will be happy to provide you with my opinion.